(For disclaimer, etc. - see chapter 1)

Chapter 8 - 4th May 2012

There was no time for emotions in battle. A soldier at war suffered so many losses, one way and another, but the time to grieve was after the fight was done. Steve and Bucky probably knew that better than most after the things they had seen, and though it was so many years ago in actuality, for them, it was mere months before that they were facing the threat of Nazis and HYDRA.

Now, the enemy had changed, but the fight was very much the same, as far as Bucky was concerned. Bad guys were coming to take away the property, the freedom, the loved ones, the very lives of innocent people, and that would not stand.

They were one man down already. Phil Coulson was a man Bucky just met two days ago, but it didn't matter. He was a brother in arms and he had fallen in service to the cause. For him, the so-called Avengers would fight. For all the people of New York and of the world, they would do what had to be done, even if what had to be done seemed to be beyond reason or human understanding.

"You ready for this, Buck?" Steve asked, as they took their positions in the New York streets.

"Sure, we can do this," he said, nodding his agreement, taking a battle-ready stance.

Truth be told, he had his reservations. After all, a crazy god-like alien had punched a hole in the sky using an all-powerful glowing cube, and now, other monster-movie style aliens were attacking the Earth. They were the team that must stop them - a green monster, a metal man, another god-like alien with a hammer, a couple of secret agents, plus Steve in his Captain America guise and Bucky himself.

"Yeah, we can do this," he repeated to himself, hoping he could believe, hoping it was true, because if it wasn't... well, that wasn't really an option right now.

At least the fight at hand was enough to take his mind off everything else, from how out of place he felt in the new world most of the time, to the complications of having fallen for a woman like Natasha Romanov. In any other circumstances, he was pretty sure she would have been the only distraction worth noticing. In a tight black leather outfit, armed to the teeth, and as fully capable as any soldier he had ever seen and then some, she was as appealing as she had ever been to him, in spite of all the lies. Still, that was something to figure out later, made clear by the screaming sound of the incoming assault.

Bucky tried not to think about what he was fighting, only concentrating on the fact they were the enemy and his team needed to overcome them. Teamwork got a little easier as time passed, as he started to get a handle on what each of his fellow Avengers was capable of.

On the ground, Steve, Natasha, and himself fought hand-to-hand with the alien hordes that got past the others, working from high above. Stark took tight corners, enticing the zooming vehicles from space to crash into the high-rise buildings, while Barton picked off more with his arrows. Thor seemed to summon his very own lightning storm, which slowed down the enemy considerably, and Hulk... well, he pretty much just smashed.

It worked. As a team, they found a rhythm, and before long, they seemed to be turning the tide. Unfortunately, just as soon as Bucky thought it was safe to stop and take a breath, a fresh wave of alien creatures came flooding down from above.

"These things just keep on coming!" he yelled to Steve.

"And they will, unless we can do something about that portal," he called back, staring up into the sky with a grimace.

"I might have an idea," Natasha admitted, breathing heavily as she rushed over to the two soldiers, an alien weapon clasped in her hands.

When she aimed it at Bucky, he flinched, only to realise a second later that she had fired a shot over his shoulder, clean through the head of a stray alien attacker that fell down dead. Before he could blink, she had shot him a half a smile, then moved on to talking with Steve about her plan, without missing a beat.

"If I can get onto one of these flying things, I can reach Stark's tower, see what I can do from the source," she said, watching the alien vehicles whip by high above. "Could use a boost though," she said then, tilting her head at Steve's shield.

Without missing a beat, the decision was made. Natasha tossed the alien weapon into Bucky's hands, backed up to get a good run, then hurtled towards Steve. Her feet hit his shield and he hoisted her high, launching her in perfect timing to grab a hold of the vehicle above. In seconds, she was gone from sight.

"She really is..." Bucky shook his head, unsure how to even finish that sentence.

"Yeah," Steve agreed. "I think you two are gonna need to have a long talk when this is over," he said, slapping his friend on the back, "but for now..."

Another team of aliens dropped down before them, armed and screaming just like the ones that came before. The time for talking most definitely was not now.

Truth be told, she hadn't been at all sure what she was going to do when she reached the top of Stark tower. The only thing clear in Natasha's mind was that somebody had to get that portal closed, or more than just New York was going to fall to the enemy. That couldn't happen, she wouldn't allow it.

It was a fight to get to her destination, but thankfully, when she finally landed there, Dr Selvig had regained independent thought and he had an idea of his own. Loki's sceptre held a power that might just be as strong as the Tesseract's own. There was a chance that the one could defeat the other, and for the moment, it was the only chance they had.

"I can close it!" she told the team over comms, when finally she had the sceptre in her hands, the Hulk making mulch out of Loki somewhere behind her, a more than pleasant sound to Natasha's ears, in the circumstances. "The portal, I can close it up now," she said with more confidence, piercing the forcefield around the cube with the sceptre's pointed end.

"Not yet!" Stark yelled back to her. "We got an incoming nuke and I need some place to put it!"

Natasha opened her mouth to tell him that it was stupid, that it was suicide, that there was every chance he wouldn't make it, one way or the other. Somehow, she just couldn't bring herself to say the words. Maybe he did know what he was doing. Maybe a miracle would happen. She couldn't really believe it, but she wanted to, as she held back with the sceptre, watching and waiting.

"You guys okay on the ground?" she called to the rest of the Avengers, almost afraid of the answer she wouldn't receive as one she might hear.

"I've had better days," Clint yelled through the comms, "but I'm not done yet."

"I have fought larger enemies than this and emerged unscathed," said Thor, the sound of his hammer hits echoing loudly as he fought on.

Natasha listened hard for more words, for any other voices. She was worried for Steve and for James. She knew what they were capable of, that she probably shouldn't be so concerned for them in the circumstances, but she couldn't help herself. Her heart constricted in her chest when nobody else answered.

"Rogers? Barnes?" she called, as loudly as she could.

"Still here," said James, at last, though he sounded like he wasn't breathing so well. "That last wave was one heck of a fight."

"Don't worry about us, Romanov," said Steve then. "We can do this all day."

That made her smile, at least for a second or two, until she looked up and realised Stark had just entered the portal with the missile at his back. She lost sight of him then, but the echo of the explosion beyond their world could be heard loud and clear below.

"C'mon, Stark," she whispered, watching closely, straining her eyes to see.

He wasn't there, and if they let the explosion from the nuke get through, the devastation it could bring...

"Close it up!" Rogers called through the comms. "Now!"

Like any good agent or soldier, Natasha didn't hesitate. On the Captain's command, she push with all her might, the sceptre piercing the forcefield and disabling the Tesseract in seconds. Immediately, the beam was broken, the portal began to collapse in on itself, the opening growing smaller and smaller as she watched. Still, Natasha strained her eyes at the sky, until finally, a familiar pattern of red and gold appeared.

"Are you guys seeing this?"

"Are you guys seeing this?"

Bucky and Steve both began to ask what she meant at the same time, when suddenly they realised it was Stark.

Thor stepped up beside them, looking anxious as he spotted Iron Man's dangerously fast descent from the sky. "He's not slowing down."

Before he had a chance to begin swinging his hammer, Hulk quite literally leapt into action. Bucky was sure his eyes were as wide as they had ever been, standing on a half-destroyed New York street that was littered with alien bodies, as he watched Tony Stark be returned to Earth by the giant green monster-man and placed at their feet.

"Is he...?" he started to ask.

Steve knelt down for a closer look, just as the Hulk roared, and Stark jolted awake, asking if they won.

"We did," Steve told him, looking a little stunned about it even as he spoke the words.

Bucky vaguely heard Stark saying he was glad and something about a place he wanted to go eat when the clean-up was over, but the truth was, Bucky's thoughts were elsewhere. He had just been in the fight of his life, like nothing he had ever experienced before. They were all lucky to be alive, even with their abilities. It was a particular miracle that those without super serum in their veins or a metal suit or a magic hammer had come through unscathed.

"Everybody still with us?" he asked through the comms device in his ear.

"I'm good," Barton replied, "though I'm pretty sure it's not me you're worried about."

"Still here," Natasha confirmed a beat later.

Bucky couldn't tell her how glad he was to hear that.

When the fight was over, the portal closed, and Stark safely returned to Earth, everybody convened at the tower, to see first-hand that Loki had been well and truly defeated. The debrief took a while, but before anyone could suggest heading home to recover in all the many ways they probably should, Stark insisted, in the way only Stark could, that they really were going to get shawarma first. Overwhelmed and exhausted to a man, it didn't seem to occur to anyone to argue.

With the streets as devastated as they were, there was no chance of getting a car through. Instead, they walked in ones and twos, like school children on an outing, though they were as far removed from such innocence as they could be in reality.

In spite of herself, Natasha had hoped to share even a few words with James, but he stuck to Steve like glue, so she let him be. After this, she probably wouldn't see much of him anyway. Though he showed concern for her after the battle, wanting to know she had made it through, she could hardly allow herself to hope too much.

"See, now, a woman with ambition like you, I figured you'd only have eyes for the captain, not the sergeant," said Stark, suddenly at her side, looking as ridiculous as possible in half a broken Iron Man suit.

"No idea what you're talking about," she said, shaking her head slightly.

She ought to have known that, after everything, he was one person she probably couldn't get away with lying to anymore.

"You're a tough cookie, Romanov, we get it, but even hard cases have feelings and hearts," he said knowingly. "Don't tell me, you're worried that nice, old-fashioned guys don't make passes at girls who kick asses?"

The smirk when he said it would usually have annoyed her. After today, it was almost amusing, even if his words did ring a little too painfully true.

"Take one piece of advice from me, please," he urged her then, the pair stopping walking at the door of the restaurant, the others already inside taking seats around a table. "After what happened today, with all that we've done, all that we've... seen," he said, looking haunted for a moment before he pressed on, "it's proof enough that life is weird and scary, and that it could end at any moment, when you least expect it. With all that being true, are you really going to stand by and let even a sliver of a chance at some kind of happiness slip through your fingers?"

With that said, Stark patted her twice on the shoulder, then went inside, already calling to the store owner for one of everything for his whole group. Natasha hovered by the door a moment longer, looking it at her fellow Avengers, eyes lingering on James for the longest time of all. She knew the answer to Stark's question, she knew what she wanted, she just wasn't sure that it was entirely her choice to make.

To Be Continued...